Will Cotton, "Brooke's Hands," sepia oil on primed paper, 30 x 22 in.
Sotheby’s recently played host to the New York Academy of Art’s auction fundraiser called, appropriately enough, Take Home a Nude. The Academy, now in its 34th year, was at its founding a radical upstart pushing against the prevailing modes of fine art education and studio practice. By repositioning studio technique, along with anatomical study and life drawing, in graduate level study, the Academy signaled the post-modern ascendancy of figurative representation and narrative content in painting, drawing and sculpture. Then dismissed as a degenerate, albeit harmless, aberration in the trajectory of contemporary art, the Academy’s curricula model has largely upended modernist teaching methods and spawned an international atelier movement replicating its dual focus on technical mastery and philosophical inquiry as the true basis for educating fine artists.
All good reasons for New York City’s cultural elite to turn out and show their support for what is now a revered institution at the forefront of the visual arts. Indeed, Take Home a Nude is one of the fall season’s premiere society events with an attending crowd that glitters with film stars, fashion royalty, artsy downtown types, and the last of the great doyennes — all bidding like mad on donated art works by Brooklyn’s finest.
With the view that auctions are high-profile competitive sports with culture dollars voting for what’s hot and what’s not — then sitting for a portrait is the new luxury. A commissioned portrait drawing by Will Cotton (Brooke Shields' pictured here) hammered down at a very respectable $20,000—leading the evening’s live auction sales.
But hey, no worries if you let this one get away. Portraits, Inc. can set you up with a dreamy commission all your own — alas without the requisite grand standing of a Sotheby’s society auction.
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